"O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself
a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams."
- Hamlet
Act II scene ii

22 August 2008

Sentries

The Tinsley Towers have stood for seventy one years on the edge of Sheffield. They watched the construction of the M1 motorway and the Meadowhall Retail Centre. Big and concrete, for many motorway travellers, they have signified where the real "Up North" of England begins. The power station of which they were a key feature has long been redundant and now the new owners - the power company "E-on" - have decided that they will be demolished this weekend in the very early hours of Sunday morning. Of course, nothing lasts forever but these sentinels, silent witnesses to a changing world had probably earned the right to remain with us a good while longer. Their functional, industrial ugliness has, with familiarity, become a kind of beauty. There has been a strong public lobby to preserve Sheffield's own "twin towers" but in the corridors of power, nobody has been listening. In memoriam, I took one or two snaps this morning...

Whenever we played gigs in Sheffield, we always knew we had arrived as we passed those cooling towers on the motorway. Shame they have gone,as long as they are not replaced with badly designed public art !

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